This paper applies Isin’s (2009) concept of “acts of citizenship” to the study of LGBTIQ activism in post-revolutionary Tunisia in order to reveal and understand how activists are practising citizenship and challenging gendered constructions of citizenship. ‘Citizenship’ is a highly contested concept. The most dominant understanding of citizenship is that of citizenship as a legal status, or in terms of routine practices of participation, such as voting (Kiwan 2016). Yet there are numerous criticisms of this conceptualization. Scholars argue that it is gendered (Kiwan 2016; Shafir 1998; Pateman 1988) and, with so many refugees and migrants excluded from the legal rights of citizenship globally, not reflective of today’s reality (Isin 2009). By failing to capture the relational nature of citizenship and that power is located within these relationships that can be contested, Isin (2016, 2009) argues that the concept of “legal citizenship” overlooks how those who are socially and legally excluded ‘act politically’ and thereby constitute themselves as citizens. Similar to Bayat (1997), Isin argues that that those whose status excludes them legally are acting politically in unexpected ways, in unexpected places, disrupting the status quo, and re-constituting themselves as political actors through these acts or ‘ruptures’ (Kiwan 2016). Isin builds on Butler’s (2009) work on gender performativity according to which actions construct identity (e.g., sexuality). By extension, the concept of ‘citizen’ is not a fixed category (Kiwan 2016). Following the revolution in Tunisia, a number of organizations defending LGBTIQ rights legally registered and began engaging in efforts to eliminate the Article 230 that criminalizes sexual acts between two consenting adults of the same sex. Today, LGBTIQ activism encompasses a wide array of groups and organizations, many of which are focused on community-building and societal awareness and largely do not engage in rights-based activism or with the state. Yet the limited literature on LGBTIQ activism in Tunisia focuses almost exclusively on rights-oriented organizations – those engaging in practices of ‘legal citizenship” (Fortier 2019, 2015; Mekouar and Zaganianis 2019). We know little about the ways in which other LGBTIQ groups and activists are ‘acting’ as citizens or how they are challenging the dominant gendered constructions of citizenship (Kiwan 2016; Isin 2009). This paper thus focuses on LGBTIQ activists’ ‘relational’ acts of citizenship – how they constitute themselves as citizens and challenge dominant understandings of citizenship. The paper is based on interviews with over thirty LGBTIQ activists in Tunisia conducted in 2019 and 2020.

Tunisia is frequently hailed as the embodiment of a triumphant revolution owing to the popular protest movements that paved the way for the beginning of a democratic transition. Since Ben ?Ali’s ouster, Tunisia has launched a series of social and political democratic reforms that have set it apart from many of its neighbors in the region. Nonetheless, despite remarkable socio-political achievements, the number of civic protests and social movements has been rising throughout the country. According to the Tunisian Forum of Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), in 2018, no less than 9356 social protests took place. In this context, my analysis focuses on one major participant in these social movements, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), and the new forms of mobilization and strategic learning adopted by its extensive assemblage of actors. I demonstrate, firstly, that the soaring number of social movements in Tunisia is the consequence of both the broadening of civic space as a result of the newly adopted democratic legislative reforms, as well as a backlash against the inability of this system to respond to the entrenched socio-economic inequalities and power structures negatively affecting large segments of the population. Secondly, examining the activities of one of Tunisia’s most historic social movement actors, I work towards demonstrating that the UGTT is not a homogeneous entity. In the post-Ben ?Ali era, its various branches (from the executive bureau all the way down to its local offices) are leveraging their position within newly opened political spaces to further objectives not tenable under an authoritarian system. To better understand the new modes of mobilization adopted by the UGTT, it is imperative to take into account the new structures within which different groups inside the organization must now operate, and the ways in which this structure is giving rise to new political and economic objectives.

What accounts for the cross-sectarian, cross-class and cross-regional mobilization in Lebanon since October 2019? Why did this mass mobilization sustain itself compared to previous forms of mobilization that had taken shape over the past decade? While Lebanon had often captured the attention of the academic and policymaking circles from the lens of sectarianism and civil wars, this paper proposes a political economy of postwar Lebanon. I root the analysis of the 2019 October revolution in the contradictions and the limits of thirty years of neoliberal policies that have both served and been served by the sectarian postwar regime. The paper traces how the postwar neoliberal and sectarian order had produced accumulation by dispossession over time while keeping citizens divided along sectarian lines, depriving them from the most basic rights that make up a decent living and at the same time contributing to enrich bankers, big businessmen, and a corrupt sectarian political leadership. While this post-war order had been sustained for years by rents, it had run its course bringing about the seeds for the 2019 uprising. The paper will then embed the current October revolution in the history of cross-sectarian mass mobilization that had taken shape since 2010. I will argue that given the breadth of the current mass mobilization, its inter-class and cross regional character and the fact that it is aimed at both the political and economic elites makes it one of the most promising instances of a Gramscian « war of position ». The paper will then conclude with a reflection on the challenges that the current revolutionaries face as they struggle for negotiating a democratic and inclusive citizenship.

This paper examines widely held views about Middle East and North Africa (MENA) activists with a focus on Muslim women’s activism in Egypt and their mobilizations through their acts of refusal. Employing Carole McGranahan’s concept of refusal, this paper illustrates how Muslim women activists in Egypt give citizenship meaning through their collective organization, and in particular how non-movements of Muslim women leading deliberate action can be politically salient without needing to possess an expressly political design in their agency. Through this work, it challenges widely held beliefs about Egyptian women’s agency, firstly that activists mobilized by Islamic principles and their pursuit of political change necessarily makes them “Islamists,” and thus, invariably they seek to contest and/or (re)appropriate the state. Secondly, by studying their acts of refusal, this paper sheds light on the view that activists’ positioning in states of authoritarian rule invariably reduces the status of such actors to ‘subjects’, when they are actually citizens. In the first instance, Islam is thought to produce particular forms of political agency and, in the second, authoritarianism is seen to deny other forms of political agency, and as such renders these women as subjects without political subjectivity. McGranahan argues that refusals are the politics of hope. In studying their politics of hope, this paper shows, rather, that these Egyptian women’s refusals illustrate change leadership of dialogism, reciprocity, a re-direction of levels of engagement, generative participation, and a stronger propensity for collaboration, rather than competition with secular forces. Different to studies that frame these women as oppositional and in resistance, this paper shows how they seek to lead change through a different kind of power (‘power from within’, ‘power with’, ‘power to’ and ‘power for’ rather than merely ‘power over’). Their forms of mobilization provide evidence of a diversification within activism that is Islamically motivated, and in fact demonstrative of innovative expressions of leadership and vision.